


I Will Do Thee Mischief in the Woods

by Lady_Phenyx



Series: Whumptober 2019 [5]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 01:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20883704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Phenyx/pseuds/Lady_Phenyx
Summary: This was a bad storm. Not the worst Jack had seen, but really, really bad.So why was there a kid out in it? And what was with the spirit leading them deeper into the woods?Whumptober Day 3: Delirium





	I Will Do Thee Mischief in the Woods

Jack crouched in the vee where branch met trunk, pressing against the tree.

He hadn't called up this storm, and he'd tried to gentle it, but even he could tell that it had to happen. It had been building up for a week now, and if it built up any more it would be really bad rather than the kind of bad it was.

Jack just wished he could have gotten it somewhere without people before it let loose. It hadn't been possible to put it off any longer, but the people in the nearby town were going to be digging out for awhile.

It was a miserable night to be out, even for a Winter Spirit. No wonder the other Winter Spirits he'd met had been so miserable, Jack thought, curling up tighter. They didn't play, they were only concerned with the dark and the cold, hardened by years of harsh weather.

Not that some of the Summer Spirits were much better, seeing as how the few that Jack had met – and it seemed there weren't many of them overall – hadn't yet gotten the message about fun, and still seemed to think everyone needed to be out in the fields working during their season. And their season was just as deadly as his, they just didn't like to admit it.

Jack would have retreated back to Burgess, or even just somewhere it wasn't storming, but since he'd been the one to let the storm loose he felt a little responsible about it. Enough he was still here in this tree. The cold might not have bothered him usually, but the wind was sharp tonight, and the tree was uncomfortable at best.

Jack was just resigning himself to an uncomfortable night in the icy tree (he'd spent nights in trees before, it was the way the wind whipped at him, the way he kept nearly slipping out, that made it bad) when a glimpse of color had him sitting up and slipping from the tree onto the wind.

There shouldn't have been anything that shade out here at this time of night.

And yet...Jack followed it to find a child, heavily bundled in coat and hat and scarf, stumbling through the woods.

Jack landed on the snow ahead of the kid, quietly panicking. “Hey, you need to get home, kid,” he said, unsurprised when he was ignored. “What are you even doing out here?”

The kid kept walking, in the wrong direction, and Jack's head lifted as he heard something, some noise catching his attention.

He snarled at the spirit he saw, beckoning the child along. It wasn't one Jack recognized, but that didn't matter.

What mattered was that it was luring this kid out here in the middle of Jack's storm, letting the winter do its dirty work, and Jack wasn't going to stand for it.

The spirit staggered as the snow ball collided with the side of its head, slowly straightening to stare at Jack. There was disbelief in the black pits of its eyes, the only spots of darkness on a spirit that looked as if a mound of dirty snow had begun moving.

“Back. Off,” Jack said, tossing another snowball in his free hand threateningly.

The spirit opened a black slit of a mouth and wailed. The child collapsed and Jack staggered back a step.

The snowball hit square in the mouth.

“Ow,” Jack complained, rubbing at his ear. “Not okay.”

The spirit wailed again, lunging for Jack, who zapped it with a shock of frost. It was the spirit's turn to stagger again, looking at Jack in shock, as if it couldn't believe he would actually do that. It lunged a second time and Jack caught it with the staff, holding it off.

“Okay, that's enough,” Jack snarled, glancing over that the child, who was shivering violently. “Let's go.”

The spirit was snagged with the hook and flung through the trees. It slumped into the snow, waiting until Jack got close to slice at him.

The claws caught on Jack's cape, tearing it and coming far too close to the skin. Jack yelped, leaping back before letting loose another blast of cold and wind.

The spirit hissed at him, and Jack heard the crunch of feet in the snow. The child was following them, eyes blank, hypnotized by the other spirit.

Jack slid between them, looking over his shoulder at the kid.

A glint of magic shone in the kid's fist, a coin on a chain dangling from the mittened hand.

Jack grabbed for it. He couldn't touch the kid directly, but things? Those he could, and he pulled the coin away from the kid's grip easily, given the kid had no idea he was there.

The kid stopped cold when he did, and Jack held up the coin, looking at it closely.

The spirit wailed again and snatched at the coin, Jack leaping up into the tree at the last second.

“Oh, this what you want?” he said, giving the coin a spin. “This how you were controlling the kid? Come get it!”

With that, he took to the skies. The spirit hesitated, looking between him and the kid, before taking off after him.

It was clumsy in the air, and Jack outpaced it on his way to the sea.

Salt was cleansing, and salt water more so.

Seeing where he was heading, the spirit put on a burst of speed, trying to catch up, but Jack had too much of a head start for it to catch up now.

Jack dropped like a rock, picking up speed as he free fell towards the sea. The wind caught him at the last moment, just above the waves, as he flung the coin into the sea.

It flashed once before disappearing under the dark, icy waves.

Behind him, the spirit wailed once more, dissolving into nothing as the magic was washed from the coin.

“Huh,” Jack said, head tilted as it disappeared. “That's...odd.”

No time to worry about it. Jack set off back towards where the kid had been, and found them sitting in the snow, as if they'd fallen when the spell had broken.

They were blinking slowly, and Jack winced. “Oh no, come on, we have to go,” he said.

The eyes focused on him, and Jack felt a thrill, only to realize a moment later that the kid wasn't really seeing him. They were getting delirious from the cold and seeing something, but probably not all of him.

So. Snowballs and wind and the like weren't going to work this time, not when the kid was this far gone in the cold that they weren't responding. Jack hated it when he came across the kids when they'd gotten this bad – it was a lot harder to get them home, and he didn't always make it.

Still...well, if the kid was already nearly delirious with cold...Jack shifted his staff to his elbow and dug for a moment in a pocket of the cape, pulling out a penny whistle.

The sharp notes floated in the air, and the kid followed where Jack led, following the music, just delirious enough to hear it even if he couldn't hear Jack's voice. Out of it enough to follow the gentle music, still primed to follow where they were led.

It was slow, and Jack nearly lost the kid more than once as they tried to sit down, but he coaxed them up each time.

Then there were people's voice, and Jack flitted back up into the tree as people came running, snatching up the kid.

He floated overhead as they rushed back into town, stopping at the edge of the forest and watching from the trees as the kid was rushed off to a hospital.

\---XXX---

When asked about that night, even years later, into adulthood, they would say what they remembered of that night. A cold voice, drawing them out into the woods, and then a soft voice whose words they couldn't understand, white hair and blue eyes and music that led them home.


End file.
